A Touch Of Cant

Antyaj!’, ‘Asprashya!’, ‘Achchut!’. Or ‘Bhangi’, ‘Chamar’, ‘Shudra’. Words of hatespeak, of social conservatism, or words that simply state the facts? A bewildered child watches wide-eyed as his classmates are forced to bathe because they’ve sat next to him in class. A civil servant is denied his promotion because he refuses to be as subservient as his upper caste colleagues expect a Pasi to be. A president of a new democracy visits France. An Untouchable in the Elysee Palace, screams the French daily Le Figaro.

Controversy erupted when President K.R. Narayanan visited Paris on an official tour recently. The ministry of external affairs sanctimoniously demanded an apology from Le Figaro for referring to the head of state as an ‘untouchable’. Le Figaro apologised, the President laughed it off and the official conscience was assuaged.

But Dalits are not convinced. Dalit activists condemn the Le Figaro controversy as nothing but an elite cover-up and a manifestation of official upper caste prejudice. The reason why the government and media made such a fuss about the word ‘untouchable’, they say, is because, paradoxically, they have their own prejudices to hide and want to stifle overt expression of the inequalities in Indian society.

"There’s nothing wrong in the use of the word ‘untouchable’," says Ravi Mallu, former Congress MP from Nagarkunoor. "Ambedkar himself constantly used it in his books. I’m an untouchable and proud of it. Those who made a fuss know nothing of the Dalits’ sufferings. They don’t want these sufferings to be shown to the world and are trying to convey a false notion of India."

If the government is to be believed, there’s something embarrassing about the word ‘untouchable’, something starkly colonial and discriminatory. In the lexicon of hatespeak, ‘untouchable’ is like ‘negro’ for African-American or ‘queer’ for homosexual. Gandhi himself didn’t like the word and changed it to ‘Harijan’. But ‘Harijan’, say Dalits, is too conciliatory and patronising. It implies the untouchables are children of god and are illegitimate. They far prefer the word ‘Dalit’ which derives from ‘pad-dalit’ or ‘squashed underfoot’. Dalit is a fighting word, a word of assertion and power.

Sociologist Andre Beteille says meanings and contexts of words change but ‘untouchable’ today is inaccurate usage. Inaccurate because, in South India, there are instances of even upper castes not being allowed to touch Brahmins. A menstruating woman according to certain traditions can’t be touched. Thus ‘untouchable’ need not apply only to those understood to be outside the caste system. And the word is pejorative because caste and untouchability have been abolished by law. For historian Arvind Das, "the French use of it is simply another example of the Western use of Indian exotica."

When she was chief minister, Jayalalitha once threatened to send Subramanian Swamy to jail for using the word ‘pariah’. Lawyer Rajeev Dhavan says words like ‘Bhangi’ or ‘Chamar’-if used in a disparaging sense, or if they offend a large number of people and cause public disorder-can become punishable offences. The President could have sued for defamation but as it turned out he said he was proud to be an untouchable. "An educated Dalit like Narayanan," says Mallu, "is doubly cursed. Because he is discriminated against intellectually and emotionally. Abuse is intangible, indirect and insidious and therefore extremely powerful." Adds Dalit writer Sheoraj Singh Bechain: "Untouchability may be abolished by law but in India, it is brutally persistent in attitudes and practice."

And caste, in its fundamental opposition to the principle of brotherhood of man and Christian egalitarianism, is simply mind-boggling for a Western observer. Thus French Indianists have been fascinated with Indian social hierarchies as seen in Louis Dumont’s Homo Hierarchicus which remains a classic study on the Indian caste system; Jean Luc Chambard’s work on anthropology and the recent biography of Ambedkar by historian Christophe Jaffrelot.

"For the French, inhabitants of the land supposedly of libertŽ, egalitŽ and fraternitŽ; where a social revolution destroyed the notion of hierarchy as birthright, the complexity of Indian castes and their religious sanctity is fascinating," says Anne Chatterjee, French political scientist. "But for Le Figaro readers, India’s an exotic, faraway place. The heading was tasteless and tactless, rather than prejudiced or racist." Le Monde also used the word ‘untouchable’ but the article was comprehensive and well-informed. In fact, when Narayanan became President, even The Washington Post had a headline saying An Untouchable becomes President. "That K.R. Narayanan is an untouchable is simply a fact," says Dhavan. "Not a defamation."

But Le Figaro correspondent Francois Gautier says sections of the French press still cling to a colonial, missionary mentality and look for magical, folkloric images from India. "Among Western journalists there’s a constant attempt to show India as a backward country of maharajas and untouchables," says he. The person who wrote the article, a former China correspondent, might have had a grudge against India and the word was certainly used in an offensive way.

Translated from the word ‘achchut’, the term ‘untouchable’ was first used in 1886 in a formal declaration by the British India education department. Until then the phrase in use was ‘depressed classes’. Dalit writer Chandrabhan Prasad says colonial rule was a godsend for the Dalits as it was the British who first offered them access to modern education through special schools and offering scholarships. "Macaulay is one of our heroes," says Prasad. He believes Ambedkar fought all his life for recognition of the ‘untouchables’ as a socially distinct category. The word is also fundamental to Dalit poetry. "The people raising a false hue and cry about Narayanan being called an untouchable are those very socially conservative people who’d like to see Dalits kept down and secretly think of the President as a shudra. They never supported his move to appoint backward and women judges."

Bechain says Le Figaro has said nothing wrong. When ‘untouchable’ children and women are killed and burnt in villages what is the harm in using a word that describes those truths? "If you open your eyes to the discrimination, you will see there is nothing wrong with the word ‘untouchable’," Bechain says.

So the mea may fulminate against the use of ‘untouchable’, but Dalits themselves are still fighting for the recognition of just how untouchable they continue to be. The sunburnt child still watches as his classmates bathe because he has touched them. The civil servant from the ‘reserved’ quota still stands quietly by as he is whispered out of his promotion. The word is the politics. The word should not be wished away. Confront the word and you confront the injustice. Sweep it under the carpet and the prejudice grows.